Oct 1st, 2008


At around 7 am, I was woken up by thumping sounds on a wooden floor above me. Breakfast time at Odyssey. We all got ready and went up to the terrace for breakfast - it was a lovely view. The red basilica was in full sight. The owner was very courteous and had even arranged a laptop with internet access. He told us that he had two houses here and ran 26 beds all by himself.

We finished out breakfast and headed for red basilica, and then to the ancient city of Akropolis. The ruins of Akropolis were on top of the hill, and fortunately, our car was doing fine. Akropolis seemed much grander than Troy - the central temple of Trajan was particularly impressive. We toured around a bit, and then headed out for Ephesus.

We thought of picking some juice on the way, and KJ went out asked a shopkeeper,came back "no, they don't have juice, its a holiday here". Hmm, ok. Next shop "they don't have juice".
"I can see the juice in there!"
"No, they don't have fresh juice"
"Fresh juice!!! Dude, let's go get a few cans!"

The drive to Ephesus was about 3 hours. Ephesus is a site of an ancient city. We decided to get an audio guide. On the shop, there was a paper with nine languages mentioned on it. KJ goes to the attendant "Do you speak nine languages?" "No, Audio guide nine languages!" "Oh, I thought we could talk to you in nine languages" - ok, that would have been interesting. Another shop selling clothes and watches proudly displayed "Genuine Fake Items" - salesmanship meets truthfulness. Its another item that A kept insisting it should have been "Fake Genuine Items" instead - go figure.

The ruins of Ephesus were the most magnificent and expansive here - the place was also very crowded. The whole route was about a kilometer long with meeting rooms, shops, baths along the way. There was also a grand theater which could seat over 25000. There were also gyms all over the place - looks like all these guys did was to have a bath, go to the gym, pick up babes and go watch the theater!

We finished at around 5 and headed for the Pumacuk beach - nice place, but not much of a crowd. Checked out a couple of camping places to see if they'd rent a tent for the beach, but didn't find takers (i.e. givers) - a guy running a restaurant offered us his tent, but it just seemed a bit dirty so we decided not to take it. Just as well, after a while, we saw three dogs playing inside!

I had just had enough of A and KJ not wanting to have lunches and dinners, so we decided to go to a restaurant and landed at one called Jimmy's Place. Great guy, very helpful, speaks english, and has great food! We also had a few games of backgammon - midway through the last one, A insisted that I should resign, and then the tables turned - this game has some ability to swing.

The drive to Pumakkale was smooth. We had picked up a few CDs and they all turned out to be crap - someone was particularly fond of Beatles and had a tribute album - unfortunately, they were not as talented as they were fond! At Pumakkale, we checked in into Artemis Yoruk hotel, which Jimmy had recommended. The guy at the reception, Servet, was in a high mood. Not sure if he was drunk (guess will find out tom) but he kept dancing and saying "no problem" to everything. Played turkish music for us on his phone when we checked in! We asked him if there was a bar or nightclub, and he pointed down the road. We had checked this one on our way in and it was empty, so we told him we were looking for something with people in it. "No problem", and he asked us to follow him, took us to a bar/restaurant he knew of. Inside, it looked the same - there was disco lights but no one dancing, some people on 3 of the 40 odd tables in there - it actually looked more like a banquet hall where tables had been put. We told him this looked pretty deserted. Pat came the reply "No, you see those girls over the next table - you can foosh! 80 liras". "Foosh!?". "Yes, foosh, take to room there, foosh" - holy cow! This guy had walked us into a prostitute hole! "No, we don't want this". "No problem".


We darted out, Servet kept playing cellphone music and dancing on the road - good fun(ny) guy. Took us to the calcium fountains - looked good, we will come back here tom. Whiled some more time on the road, and then came back, retired.